


I Wanna Hold Your Hand

by the-bi-writer (ineedapenname)



Series: Finn/Rey One-Shots [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Explicit hand-holding, F/M, Fluff, finn just really needs a hug, mentions of battle, the other characters are there but really this is just Finn/Rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 00:12:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8379889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineedapenname/pseuds/the-bi-writer
Summary: By daylight he tells himself that he’s fine without touch. He’s lived without it for 19 years, and can certainly do it again. But in honest midnight moments, he can’t forget the feel of her calloused palm in his.(aka the one where Finn and Rey adjust to life on the rebel base.)





	

The battle was over.

Impossibly, they had done it. The tiny group of rebels had driven back the First Order, destroyed a planet-wide weapon, and forced their enemies to retreat to a galaxy far, far away.

It was over, and they had won.

*

The Resistance base is thrumming with life.

First, comes the joy: Soldiers slap each other's backs and share victory yells. Poe makes a triumphant toast to the whole resistance while fantastically drunk. Everyone feasts for two days, singing songs of celebration until almost dawn.

The relief of survival is electric, addicting. 

Then comes the sorrow: Friends huddle in groups around make-shift shrines, telling stories of the fallen amidst laughter and tears. General Organa holds long vigils to honor the dead, then quietly places medals of valor on each shrine. Her eyes grow more shadowed every day.  

The grief of survival is suffocating. 

Finn and Rey watch all of it side by side, wide-eyed and wondering. They’ve never seen such raw emotion.

Rey didn’t know there was this much joy and grief in the whole galaxy.

Beside her, Finn nods in agreement, and Rey realizes she’s spoken aloud. She’s grateful she’s not alone in this strange new world.

*

Slowly, they learn.

It’s Poe who first convinces Rey to eat full portions, murmurs to her that _it’s okay_ , _and she’s safe now, and she doesn’t have to be hungry anymore._

*

It’s Jessika Parva who gets the first full-belly laugh out of Finn, after getting him drunk and telling the dirtiest joke she knows.

Rey would burn galaxies to keep that smile on his face.

*

It’s Finn who teaches Rey to shoot properly, after she almost kills them both in blaster practice.

(He hasn’t stopped teasing her about it.)

*

It’s Rey who teaches Finn how to sleep.

*

Finn is still baffled by the way rebels sleep.

Stormtroopers sleep in two hour chunks, just enough to keep them functioning, never enough to allow them to dream.

Dreams are dangerous things for soldiers, and so they were strictly denied.

Now, at the rebel base, Finn’s nights are his own. Every night he has eight hours to himself in the glorious, quiet dark.

And he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

He starts most nights in the sparring room, throwing knives by moonlight while imagining General Phasma’s face. He works on his saber technique until his arms ache. He even practices meditation exercises from General Organa that are supposed to help with post-battle sleep (they don’t.)

After he wears himself out with night-time training, he wanders the halls, memorizing the layout of the base.

Even here, among friends, he maps out the halls with practiced precision. He can’t rest until he knows every route he could take in an emergency; he won’t let himself sleep unless he knows exactly what he’ll do if it comes time to run.

That, of course, brings him to Rey’s room. Each escape plans includes her (of course.) He knows exactly how long it takes to reach her quarters (25 seconds at a run), and how to get them both quickly out, if it ever comes to that.

So Finn finds himself outside Rey’s door every night, and he tells himself that this is why.

He’s protecting her, he reasons. Both while she sleeps, and in the future if he ever needs to grab her hand again, and pull them both to safety while the world around them explodes into flame.

It’s this exact memory - that moment he cannot scrub from his mind - that brings him to her door at night.

By daylight he tells himself that he’s fine without touch, that he’s lived without it for 19 years, and can certainly do it again. But in honest midnight moments, he can’t forget the feel of her calloused palm in his.

So he stands guard night after night, never daring to knock, never daring to ask.

Tonight though, he’s just tired enough, just foolish enough, to knock quietly at her door.

*

The soft knock comes hours before dawn. 

Rey’s awake in an instant, quarterstaff in hand, before she remembers where she is. Long years of light sleep and habitual vigilance have yet to wear off.

She forces herself to take three deep breaths. _I’m on the rebel base_ , she reminds herself. _I’m surrounded by friends. I’m no longer alone._

She repeats these three mantras, one for each breath, until she feels her heartbeat calm.

Then she reaches out with the force and realizes that it is only Finn, wandering by like he often does during sleepless nights. She senses him there most evenings, her peripheral awareness of his force signature creeping into her subconscious and bringing him into her dreams.

They are the most pleasant dreams she’s ever had.

She waves a hand to let him in. He stands in the doorway, fully dressed, hands awkwardly shoved in his pockets.

Rey finds it unbearably adorable.

She’s is relieved to see him, then curious, then suddenly very aware she’s wearing only an oversized shirt from the lost and found.

She scurries back to her cot, throwing blankets over bare legs, and looks up.

“Finn?”

He stands, unmoving, frozen to the spot.

“What are you doing up?’” she asks.

When he doesn’t respond, she motions him to sit down. He joins her on the bunk, sitting carefully on the edge, facing half away into the darkness of the room. 

“Nightmares?” she asks cautiously. It’s often these that keep her up, and she can’t stand the thought of him having them too.

He shakes his head, and begins studiously studying his palms, where a cut from their day-time training has yet to heal. 

She follows his gaze and asks tentatively, “Do you need salve for your hand? I have some bacta patches in my bag.”

He doesn’t look up, just shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head.

Rey is uncertain of how to handle this quiet, night time Finn, so different from the vibrant and jubilant friend she trains beside every day.

“I....” She stops, breathes, tries again. She senses that maybe that all he needs right now is quiet companionship in the lonely dark.  

She reaches for her holopad, giving him space until he’s ready to talk.

“I’m gonna look through my manuals for a bit, okay? I’ll...I’ll be right here if you need me.”

She sees him flash a quick smile, before he ducks his head back down again.

She nods to herself, happy to comply. She likes that they can be quiet together. Needs it, actually. In this soft midnight moment, she can admit that Finn is the only thing grounding her in this dizzying new life.

She thumbs through the holopad absently, re-reading old ship manuals. She’s on her third article about warp drive maintenance when he suddenly speaks.

“I wanna hold your hand.”

*

He holds his breath after his confession, cheeks burning with hope and fear.

Neither of them is used to contact, he knows. Even in the heat of battle, he always felt like there were Rules about touching. They held hands when running from desert explosions, hugged after kidnappings, embraced when they hadn’t expected to survive.

In those moments of joy and fear, relief and adrenaline, it felt so natural to wrap his arms around her lithe frame, or to take her hand when his only thoughts were _danger, danger, danger,_  and _Rey, Rey, Rey._

Maybe that’s why he’s here only now, in this brief moment of sleep-deprived bravery.

It seems an eternity until she answers, but when he looks up she’s smiling. The air rushes back to his lungs, water in the desert and breath after a storm.

She sits up, gently stills the hand he’s been picking at, and covers it with both of her own. She says, soft and certain, “Always.”

*

She knows it’s the right answer when she sees his shy grin, hopeful and real.

It’s the smile she lives for; the one that crinkles his lovely dark eyes, the one that washes away flashbacks of combat and capture, of endless hungry nights alone.

She can’t say any of this out loud - not because she’s shy, but because she’s never been good with words - so she clumsily folds the sentiment into a thought and slides it toward his mind with the force.

He meets her eyes, startled, and grins again. She feels her heart sigh in quiet relief.

*

Finn had been so worried that he was the only one; that he was alone in pining for the contact they first shared during battle. Holding her hand had brought him back to himself, when all he'd wanted to do was run.

Those first, brief moments of touch changed him more than he’d thought possible. He’d blown up a planet just to hold her again.

Now here he was, on the edge of her bed, on the edge of something new.

He looks up when she takes his hands, sighs with relief when she pulls him gently toward her, patting the space beside her on her tiny bunk.

They try - unsuccessfully - to fit into her small cot. They bump heads and giggle as they shift around, squirming to fit both of them on the small bed.

It doesn’t work, but it doesn’t matter.

Finn's shoulder goes numb where the sidebar digs into his back, but Rey is curled against his chest, and her hand is in his, and nothing could ever matter as much as this.

All he can think is _safe, safe, safe,_ and _Rey, Rey, Rey._

He didn’t know there was this much peace in all the galaxy.

*

It’s General Organa who wakes them in the morning.

They both sleep through breakfast, too delighted in their discovery of affection to be bothered with timetables.

Rey opens the door in the late morning to find a frantic general. General Organa’s face flits in quick succession from frantic, to confused, to relieved when she sees Finn still sleep-mussed on the cot.

“Oh thank the stars,” she breathes. “When Finn didn’t show up to training I assumed he was hurt. He’s been right on time to every training, meeting, and meal, and his force signature was so much more muted than normal…”

Rey smiles that she was finally able to help her friend find proper sleep.  

General Organa is still talking. “That kid’s energy usually lights up the base like a star in the mornings, so when I didn’t feel it I thought he might have wandered out in the rain last night and fallen somewhere....”

“Yes, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up,” Finn calls groggily from the bunk.

And so it’s Finn, finally, who gets General Organa to laugh again.

*

**Author's Note:**

> I'm taking prompts for Finn/Rey fluff, so leave 'em in the comments!


End file.
